Something I've thought might be a good idea would be to give each user a small number of Supervotes per day. These would be worth several normal votes, would possibly cost some rep, and would be rationed to maybe 3 per day (as opposed to the 30(?) per day limit for normal votes).

Sometimes you see answers that are so good you want to upvote them really hard. This would be a way to do it.

(But it complicates the voting system and the UI, and probably isn't worth the costs. Discuss. 8-)

9 Answers
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I think it would probably be too much complication to the voting system than many would like (even though I personally like the idea of being able to give a more valuable vote away).

If this was even entertained, how would you differentiate the votes? Would it show up as a sudden +X or would there be a separate space to count supervotes? If there is not, the extra score may imply that more people are agreeing than there actually are, which can be misleading to many people. Edit: If we were to allow supervotes but not show them as separate votes, I would hope that they are still counted at +1 but the extra rep would not be shown and only displayed to the user in question. If a voter wants to state that they left one, that's fine

I would like to say that if you are that intent on giving a supervote, the cost to cast must be equal to the actual cost of the vote. That would make it a direct exchange and would potentially limit any possible gaming from just trading away votes to each other to increase both accounts' rep.

Actually, the community often doesn't watch for answers that are already marked accepted. And maybe the first or second below that. So the answers that arrive late, however good they may be, are often buried somewhere on page ...
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ldigasOct 2 '09 at 14:58

I like how everyone on this website has the same voting weight for each question. You can vote once per question/answer and it has the same effect from a user with 15 rep vs 5000 rep. It keeps the community in balance to a degree.

A better way to achieve this is to publicize the question. Tweet, blog, facebook or whatever, along with a comment like "terrific answer" and link directly to the answer rather than the question. If your followers in that other area care about the same areas as you, they'll probably at least read the question and the answer, and they'll arrive primed to upvote it. You might even get a badge from the announcer family.

If you find an answer that deserves more repuation than its current votes have provided, and (per the question) you're willing to spend some of your own rep... then award a bounty. There's a reason tailor-made for this case: something like "one of the answers is deserving of an extra bonus".

Different vote types not only complicates the UI but break the "all votes are equal" principle that's pretty fundamental to Stack Exchange.